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Football for Dummies: Learning the Ropes from Madden NFL

My love of sports died in kindergarten. I was on the playground with some other boys, and we were tossing the ball around. I don't remember if we were playing baseball, dodgeball, or catch: all I recall is that somebody threw it to me, and I missed it. It rolled maybe 10 or 14 feet away, so I had to run and throw it to the next kid -- and of course, when I tried, it fell short. We went around and I tried again, and the ball missed my hands and flew away. The other boys made a decision: If I was going to have to keep running to the end of the playground, I might as well stay over there.

And I never played ball again.

In fact, I tuned out of sports altogether. I'm so stubborn about it that here I am, in my late 30s, and I still don't know anything about them. I don't know if we're in baseball or basketball season. I don't know a lay-up from a jockstrap. I barely know the rules of games like hockey and tennis, and I am totally, completely stupid about America's real pastime -- the game that, every year, launches a million tailgates and keeps a thousand Texan high schools from drifting off like tumbleweeds. I'm talking about American football.

I may get the gist of other sports, but football leaves me baffled. How could a game this brutal take so much brains? Why do you need so many rules, so many tactics, for a game about -- as a friend put it to me -- a bunch of fat guys running into each other? And if it's so damn complicated, why do so many drunk people love watching it?

Lately, it's been bugging me that I know so little about it. So I placed a little bet with myself: I decided to try to learn how to play, and since I'm way too lazy to go in the park and throw a pigskin, I would try to learn it from a video game. And the obvious game to play is Madden NFL.

Lesson #1: Yes, You Can Learn Football from Madden

Madden has a hardcore rep. It's the biggest, baddest, most stats-heavy sports game on the market, or so people tell me. Everyone I know warned me not to start there. As my friend Patrick, who knows more about football than anyone else I know, put it, "The game is so super-simulator now and dense and heavy that it's practically unplayable for a guy like me. The crap is crap layered upon crap, and the gameplay before the actual 'playing' is stifling. What the f*** is all that crap? Honestly."

I borrowed Madden NFL 09, the one with a redheaded guy in a green jersey on the cover. I tried jumping into a real game, and of course I was overwhelmed in seconds -- all the players and plays, the cheering and commentators all distracting me while I was just trying to find the little guy I was controlling. Or, for that matter, figure out which team I was on in the first place.

So that was a non-starter. But if you're patient, Madden 09 will give you a hand. When you boot the game, it offers to take you to a virtual trainer where Tron-like wireframes break down the mechanics and help you master each one. You learn to run with the ball and pass it, and to defend against the other guy's plays. Helpful glowing symbols tell you which button to press to get the best move.

I did better with some drills than others. My passing was beautiful, but when it came to tackling, I kept jumping into empty air instead of catching the guy with the ball. The only way I could bring him down was by crashing to the grass and tripping him, like Buster Keaton doing a pratfall. But I didn't give up. I worked my way through the training drills, and then the practice sessions, where you control a real team on the field without the pressure of a clock or a score. That's when I learned to dig the concept of passing. It's a mechanic that I've almost never seen in a game: in a matter of seconds, you have to pick one of the guys running across the field, throw the ball to him, and hope that he catches it. And that last part is based on whether the defense has their act together, whether you were running around when you made the throw, and whether or not your target screws up. Unlike Halo, where a pixel-perfect sniper shot from across the map will always net you a kill, Madden 09 treats its in-game players like human beings. And sometimes, humans screw up.

I was steadily getting the hang of the game; Madden was teaching me football. And that makes sense, right? Why wouldn't it walk the newbies through the basics? But that's not what I expected -- and it's not what sports games are obliged to do. Sports games are the least "video gamey" of games; they're the least fantastical, and they assume the most knowledge from their players. Even a chess game will throw you a manual that explains how the knights move. Madden assumes you know the rules coming in -- and if you don't, it's easy to feel left out.